BioWare posts

Dragon Age 2 came out nearly two months ago but the fantasy RPG from developer BioWare is finally offering its gamers its first post-release downloadable content. This release is an item pack (the first of a series apparently) that gives your characters some extra stuff to use.

In fact there are three items packs to download and install for the Mage, Rogue and Warrior characters to use. Each pack has new weapons, amour and other in-game items for your RPG pleasure. You can download each of the character packs for 240 BioWare points (about $3) or get all three character DLC packs in a bundle for 400 BioWare points (about $5).

Without a doubt the most anticipated MMO game launch in several years is Star Wars The Old Republic. BioWare's upcoming game has a lot to live up to and today a financial analyst says that the game could generate over 1 million subscribers in its first 12 months.

Gamasutra reports that Janco analyst Mike Hickey predicts that the game's sales will "far exceed" the 500,000 to 1 million sales mark but that the game's continued development "must be perfectly orchestrated" to keep its subscriber base from going down. Hickey predicts that at the 1 million subscriber level, Star Wars The Old Republic will bring in $161.9 million in revenues and $35 million in profits during its first year. The game is currently scheduled to be released during the second half of 2011.

Star Wars The Old Republic hasn't been released yet but BioWare's long awaited MMO is already the subject of two prose novels (Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance and Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived). Today the games official web site has announced a third novel is in works and it features a character from BioWare's original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic single player RPG.

That character, which some of you have guess from the novel's cover art on the right, is Revan. One of the most popular characters from BioWare's first Star Wars game, author Drew Karpyshyn (who helped create the character) will show the Jedi Knight/Sith after the events of the first game and though and after the events of that game's sequel. While the novel will take place well before the events of The Old Republic MMO Karpyshyn says in an interview, " ... the events of this book have a major impact on shaping The Old Republic universe." Look for Star Wars The Old Republic Revan to be released later this year.

BioWare's first all orginal RPG was Jade Empire, a action-themed game with Asian influences. It was first release for the original Xbox in 2005 and later for the PC in 2007. While BioWare team members have talked about doing a sequel to Jade Empire some day there is now evidence that Jade Empire 2 was more than just a thought experiment.

The LinkedIn profile for game designer Rafael Brown, now working at id Software, lists Jade Empire 2 as a game he worked on but was unreleased. Again, BioWare has never officially announced plans for a Jade Empire 2 but it appears that there were at least some progress made on the sequel.

An annoying issue for some Dragon Age Origins PC players has supposedly been resolved. A post on the game's official message boards states that an online issue that kept players from playing the DLC content for the fantasy RPG "should now be fixed."

The issue started on April 9 and has angered a number of the game's players who have felt that BioWare's DRM set-up is to blame for this latest issue in the 2009 released RPG. An editorial at Ars Technica sums up the argument: "The fact that DA:O has to reauthorize my DLC every time I log into the Bioware server is just nuts, and it sets users up for all sorts of problems."

Accessing downloadable content for Dragon Age Origins have caused problems for at least some players of BioWare's first game in its fantasy RPG series. Over the weekend players of the game encountered issues while trying to login and play the DLC packs for the game.

BioWare's Rob Bartel finally posted up word on the game's official message boards on Monday that BioWare was aware of the DLC issues, saying that the online servers "experienced an as yet unidentified failure" that cause some players to see a message "indicating that the DLC was unauthorized." BioWare says it is now looking into the problems and "working to resolve the issue on our end."

So far the games in BioWare's Mass Effect RPG series have been strictly single-player based affairs. The upcoming third game in the sci-fi series will continue that trend with no multiplayer features planned. But could BioWare see itself making a Mass Effect MMO game one day?

Reporting from Game Informer's recent print preview of Mass Effect 3, VG247.com states that BioWare's Casey Hudson admitted, "A lot of people say that they want to see an MMO, I think that kind of makes sense for this universe." He added, "I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn't it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense."

While last week's update on the Star Wars The Old Republic web site may have been an April Fool's joke, this week's update for the upcoming MMO is quite real and very detailed. Georg Zoeller, the Principal Lead Combat Designer for the game, gives out even more info about the advanced character classes in the game.

The update shows how the classes skill trees work to give the classes more abilities, with lots of examples. The blog update also shows how developer BioWare uses server metrics to evaluate how the advanced character classes work for players, including movement heat maps.

We won't go into much of what's been revealed but two big things are that the RPG system will be deeper than Mass Effect 2. The other is that there will be no multiplayer in Mass Effect 3, despite lots of rumors to the contrary. There might be multiplayer features in future games and/or spin-offs but the core Mass Effect trilogy will remain single player only. The game still due out this winter.